Mann’s plan unites Albany, Schenectady and Troy

Earlier than expected, the federal magistrate who has taken over New York’s congressional redistricting process has issued a draft of district lines that would unite the cities of the Capital Region into a single district.

U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann Tuesday morning proposed a single district encompassing Albany and Schenectady counties as well as eastern Montgomery County, including Amsterdam, western Rensselaer County, including Troy and Rensselaer and southern Saratoga County stretching as far north as the city of Saratoga Springs. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, currently represents portions of the area.

Mann proposed bunkering the Capital Region between a Hudson Valley / Catskills district and an Adirondack district. Rep. Bill Owens, D-Plattsburgh, would stretch down through Essex and Warren counties as well as northern Saratoga County. The district would also encompass Watertown and the entire Adirondack Park.

Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, currently resides in the Hudson Valley district, which would include Columbia, Greene, Ulster, Otsego, Delaware and Schoharie counties, as well as parts of Montgomery and Dutchess counties.

Since the number of districts allotted to New York is shrinking form 29 to 27, two members of the delegation will be left without a district to run in. As a result, members of the delegation this year spent over $160,000 in 2011 lobbying state officials that drew the lines.

Mann seized control of the process last week after a panel of three federal judges agreed with a lawsuit claiming LATFOR, the state task force controlled by Democrats who dominate the Assembly and Republicans who hold a bare majority in the Senate that normally draws the maps, had reached “impasse” over a set of congressional boundaries.

LATFOR’s partisan halves, as well as Assembly Republicans, submitted their own plans to Mann last week that differed in their treatment of the Capital Region. All of the submissions, as well as Mann’s proposed maps, center individual seats around Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo.

Gibson’s district currently snakes along the Hudson River around the Capital Region’s urbanized areas to Lake Placid. The proposed map absorbs much of Rep. Maurice Hinchey’s district; Hinchey announced earlier this year he was not running for re-election.

The same panel of judges that tasked Mann with drawing the maps will hold a hearing on her plan March 15, and vote on whether to adopt them. The federal court has so-far not intruded into the process of drawing lines for the Senate and Assembly, for which LATFOR produced a set of draft maps last month.

Those maps were roundly derided; Gov. Andrew Cuomo denounced them as “hyper-political” and vowed to veto the first draft. But he has since used his veto threat — which would reduce the weight of any LATFOR proposal in court challenges to the state lines — to try and negotiate for statutory and constitutional changes that would create a more independent state commission to draw lines in the future.

Another federal judge set the congressional primary for June 26 after ruling state officials had taken no action to comply with a law mandating military voters stationed overseas receive their ballots at least 45-days before the November general election. The same judge, Gary Sharpe, ruled that petitioning for congressional seats may begin March 20.